Bob Marley’s family is NOT happy about Verizon going over their heads to ink a deal with Universal Music Group to sell exclusive Marley ring tones. Verizon will also be able to use Marley’s image exclusively. According to the family, such use would constitute an endorsement which would and should allow them to set parameters on how Bob’s music and images could be used.
They won’t be able to control any of it if Universal and Verizon win this one. Universal is calling the family’s claims “meritless” and insists that it’s operating within the terms of a longstanding contract.
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Here’s a quick bit of watch geekery. There are a few types of watch lume, the stuff you paint on dials to make them glow. Some companies use little vials of tritium and some just use a luminous paint that holds a “charge” for a few hours. Here is a guy who ran a test on a three watches, a Luminox, a Seiko, and a Ball. The Seiko and the Ball use tritium while the Seiko uses a standard lume. He ran the test for about three hours but you’re supposed to be able to see all three for at least 10 or so. Cool shots, though.
Lume Test: Ball EMII Diver, Seiko Monster, Luminox. [WatchUSeek]
I’m a SeV fiend. I wear SeV shirts when I travel because it wicks away sweat and nastiness and they can be washed in a hotel sink without much trouble. I also wore an SeV jacket and pullover last winter and I’m glad to announce that they have a new version, the Evolution, coming out in October. You can pre-order it now for $120 and if you like gadgets, you might want to take a look.
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The LG KS20 has officially been announced at IFA and Vincent from SG strikes again with a demo. Enjoy.
If you’ve been holding off on purchasing the Hidden Fronts map pack then your wait hasn’t been in vain. Starting this Labor day at 2AM PDT, you’ll be able to download the pack for FREE. AWESOME.
Found this odd German forklift training video that half-way reminds me of those old Army comics they used to put out and maybe Day of the Dead. I would love to work at this place, though. All that blood. Kinda NSFW, as well.
Happy Labor Day!
Someone owes me some burned-out retinas.
via Giz
His fault? No.
In no way, shape or form did video games, violent or otherwise, shape the actions of Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho. (Just like John opined several months ago.) That’s the conclusion reached by a panel under the watchful eye of Virginia Governor Tom Kaine. It turns out the only experience Cho had with video games was with the likes of Sonic, hardly a game that inspires violent behavior. In fact, Cho hardly did anything. Nearest his roommate could tell, all Cho did was study and download music.
Time for the liberal, mainstream media to find another scapegoat, ’cause it looks like video games won’t cut it this time.
Report: Virginia Tech Massacre Unrelated to Games [GameDailyBiz]
Damn. Apple just gave NBC walking papers. NBC declined to continue their contract and Apple basically said cyabye. That’s some serious hard ball. I guess I’ll have to torrent my Heroes from now on.
“We are disappointed to see NBC leave iTunes because we would not agree to their dramatic price increase,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of iTunes. “We hope they will change their minds and offer their TV shows to the tens of millions of iTunes customers.”
Apple Slaps Back, Gives NBC the Preemptive Boot From iTunes [Giz]
We seemed to have misplaced our tickets to IFA this year, but Vincent from Slash is getting some great coverage of LG’s latest gem, Viewty.
Sony Ericsson mobile phone owners will soon be able to add an extra 8GB of storage-y goodness. The Sandisk M2 cards are currently being tested by phone manufacturers and should be available to the public later this year.
Pricing hasn’t been set but a quick check on Amazon shows that the 4GB version can be had for just under $75, with an MSRP of $99. So perhaps the new version will be available for around $100-$120 when it’s offered later in the year.
This is all well and good for the relatively small percentage of phones and devices that use this format but howsabout bumping MiniSD and MicroSD capacities up a little bit now, eh SanDisk?
SanDisk Press Release via Mobility Site
Want to know what you’ll be doing the morning of September 4th? Lining up at your local Game Stop, Toys R Us or wherever to hopefully snatch up one of the limited edition Halo 3 headset and controllers. Failing that you could pick up a 360 Messenger Kit that includes the backlit Chatpad and a headset. All things Halo 3 will retail for $59.99 while the Messenger Kit is a mere $29.99.
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Gotta love the Web. Here’s the video of Nokia’s touch screen mobile phone that caused everyone at the Nokia: Go Play event to laugh throughout the entire thing. I was completely speechless and so was Seth.
Hate it when leechers ruin your BitTorrent experience? A Harvard team has developed a client called Tribler that rewards uploaders with faster download speed and punishers leechers with death. Wait, hold on… No, not death, but with slower downloads. My mistake.
The system introduces a sort of currency concept to downloading. Called “TV watching minutes” (damn that needs a better name), users would earn “minutes” by uploading a lot. Conversely, you’d “spend” your “minutes” whenever you download. Easy peasy, to quote Joel Johnson.
Tribler [Harvard via The Beeb]
The iPhone’s touch screen is old news by now, so it’s time to move on to the next big thing, right? Of course it is. Sharp’s announcement of its latest LCD touch screen is making a few ripples and for good reason. This here touch screen is a mere 1mm thick, has optical sensors built into each pixel of the LCD and it has a scanner function. All of this on top of the multi-touch functionality we’ve all grown to love. Samples are being shipped out this September with production gearing up in the Spring.
Press Release
Eli Whitney brought interchangeable parts to the U.S. a few years ago, condemning the South to an agriculture-based economy for much of its history. I doubt Whitney had spiffy-looking headphones in mind back then, though. From Sleek Audio comes the SA6 In-Ear Monitors, a pair of $250 headphones that use interchangeable parts. As the easy-to-follow diagram shows, you’re able to replace five parts including the tip and driver. This system makes is so that you can totally customize your music-listening experience. Listening to hip-hp or house and need more bass? Or what about jazz and rock, where the highs are a little more important? (I think— I’m pretty much exclusive to DJ mixes these days.) Just switch the desired port to your liking—Sleek will sell treble and bass tips alongside the SA6’s release—and you’re good to go.
The headphones will be available something in the third quarter. If you pre-order them now you’ll save $30.
Product Page [Sleek Audio via New Launches]
Shure’s headphones have been a popular upgrade for those crappy earbuds that came with your music player. But now that the E series has become the company’s professional line, the consumer-focused SE line has been lacking a counterpart to the $99 E2c — until now. The SE110 rounds out the bottom end of the price spectrum, and it holds up pretty well against the competition in the sub-$100 in-ear headphone category. But it has a few tricks up its sleeve that push it over the top, unless you’re the type of listener who absolutely needs pummeling bass.
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I thought the ad I saw in London for the RAZR 2 was a bit much, but this is over the edge. The RAZR 2 will not get you laid nor will it incite a Bruce Lee inspired fight scene with a really hot chick. ‘Sharper Than Ever’, huh? How about lamer than ever. The music is good, Shiny Toy Guns, and the girl is hot, so I guess it’s par for the course.
You know how when you watch TV and the characters are clearly using an Apple laptop, but the distinctive piece of fruit is taped over or turned into a different fruit? (Drake and Josh uses a pear, for example.) Now, with a little elbow grease and the patience of a saint you’ll be able to carve your own fruit logo (or whatever else you want). Here, you’ll find the step-by-step directions needed to create and cut out your logo of choice. So when you head back to campus next week, you won’t be another dope with an Apple on your laptop; no, you’ll be the dope with the banana on it.
Banana PC – Custom Laptop Logo [Instructables via MAKE]
Opera sure knows how to make a snazzy web browser. I know I love using it on my Helio devices and apparently even Sidekick users can get a taste if they’re in the developer community. So it’s nice to know that v2 of the 4.0 aka Dimension is now readily available. So what’s the fuss? Well, there’s now a landscape mode that rivals that of the Safari browser on the iPhone. The start page has gone all multi-search allowing for searches on multiple search engines. Redundant much? Crackberry users are getting a customized UI and enhanced support. Oh no they didn’t? Oh yes they did. Get it via your Java-enabled phone here.
